This (old) post details how to interfere with randomness to make it feel more random to the end user.
This reminded me of how many games “cheat” in a similar way to make critical hits seem more fair (increase the probability when it has not triggered for too long and decrease it when it just triggered)
I don’t understand the purpose of Spotify posting a complete work of fiction like this. There’s nothing random about their Shuffle setting, nothing at all. There’s a reason third-party sites that serve no other purpose than to shuffle Spotify playlists exist.
Well, no one‘s saying Spotifys implementation is any good. But the theory that true randomness doesn’t always feel random still stands true. Most music player/streaming apps implement this in some way. Some better, some worse.